


Ice

by riverbanks



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, POV Third Person Limited, Present Tense, Slipstream - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4329525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreams of white now. He dreams of her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice

**Author's Note:**

> The prompts for this fic were "PTSD" and "the hole in Cullen's roof" - I've combined them into one, as they seemed to go together. Story loosely inspired by a passage in the novel Ice, by Anna Kavan.

 

He hasn’t seen snow for a decade when he comes back to Ferelden - it never snowed in Kirkwall, there was hardly any winter to speak of in the Free Marches. It’s a shock, at first, the touch of ice on his skin again after what feels now like a lifetime of stifling heat and ruthless summers. But it feels like comfort, somehow. Like a cup of warm milk on a rainy evening, aging hands weaving wicker baskets and mending wool socks. Like coming home. 

 

* * *

 

He has a bed in Haven, warm fire and dry sheets, but most nights Cullen would rather rest outside, the North wind howling past the tents, the clatter and chatter of soldiers, a horse whinnying in the distance as thin snow falls over dawn, melting before it ever reaches the ground, covering their tents in dew and early morning mist. His room, their room, is warmer, quieter, but there’s no window, and the walls feel tight around him. The nights shut between those walls, turning hopelessly in his sheets and trying not to wake Cassandra and Josephine in their own beds, are dark and suffocating in a way that sitting under the open sky and watching the stars all night isn’t, out there.

She catches him outside by the fire one night, staring into the flames, and asks him a question he doesn't quite hear. She pulls a stool closer and joins him, uninvited, heating her hands up by the fire and smiling at him, a warm, tired grin that makes him feel a strange weight on his muscles, the hint of a yawn building on his throat. Like he might even try to sleep tonight.

"There's snow in your hair," she says, chuckling into a scarf that doesn't look hers. She had nothing but the clothes on her body when they pulled her out, and much of what she wears now is either borrowed or handed down. She looks nothing like a Lady these days, but she doesn’t complain, and that’s a first for a noble, Cullen thought at first, before she started joining him for walks among the daily drills, or by the fire at night. Before he knew her.

Cullen stares at her hands as she blows into them for warmth, the tips of her fingers pale and damp, pointlessly unguarded by her hunting gloves -dark padded leather, the horse of house Trevelyan embroidered over the gauntlet that covers her forearm- made for sport, not winter, but one of her last own possessions. The green of her mark lights her face up like a ghost in the night, reflects on her green eyes like those of a preying cat, glowing with caution in the dark, studying him, following the line of his eyes over to her own hands and holding her breath for a beat so neither of them will run. He wonders if she'd ever seen snow before coming to Ferelden. He wonders if he should lend her his coat.

"Good night, Commander," is the last thing she says before she's standing and leaving him to his thoughts, the fire no longer enough to warm her tan, sun-craving Marcher skin. "Don't freeze out there."

Cullen shakes the snowflakes off his hair and catches dew in his hand, watching tiny droplets freeze over his palm, cold seeping through him from his fingers to numb the throbbing pain behind his eyes. He feels the blood in his veins frosting into crystals, and the blue, always lingering there, red and blue flecks of cold dust reflecting off each other, turning him to ice from the inside out. He's freezing, from head to toes. He's alive.

 

* * *

 

She finds them, somehow, a flicker of green over seas of stark, endless snow. Cullen runs as fast as his legs will give, but he’s too late, and what he saw as a miracle stumbling in the distance is only a heap of loose limbs and stray hair when he reaches her. Her leathers are torn at her legs, one arm bent in unnatural ways, glove ripped at the wrist, leaving only shreds of leather behind. He can see part of the horse’s head, still. The last of Lady Trevelyan, and even that torn away from her.

She’s covered in white.

They work at her day and night - Lady Vivienne worries her broken arm with a focus Cullen remembers only from the most skilled healers he’s ever known, and he prays it will be enough. Solas takes her hand and sleeps by her side several times a day, seeking her in her dreams, trying to wake her up from a dream of white void, he claims. She’s trapped in the ice, and won’t hear his call, he says. It catches at the back of Cullen’s throat, like a bad taste he had forgotten, like an old scar that suddenly itches again.

It takes days for the sickly blue tint to leave her lips, and there’s no tan left in her skin. She barely looks like herself. Cullen rests in a chair by her side at night, keeping the fires around her burning high. The fire seems to have no effect on her, no matter how many torches he brings closer, but the warm red flames make her look more alive in the dark of night than she does by the harsh pale daylight, and that’s a small comfort. His mantle rests over her shoulders, the wool of his robes and the bear fur of his pauldrons the warmest cover they could find for her out here, in the middle of nowhere. He’s cold, but so is everyone else. He feels her forehead for a fever break, in vain, and lightly whisks her hair clean off snowflakes that aren’t there.

She inhales suddenly, deeply, sharply, truly breathing for the first time in days, breathing in as though she needs all the air in the sky in her lungs, and Cullen’s fingers still in the air, an inch away from her face. She doesn’t wake, not yet, but she is alive, and it’s all he needs to know.

 

* * *

 

Cullen dreams of white now. He dreams of her. Alone, limping towards nothing, drowning in light, snow building on her boots, climbing up her legs, encasing her in ice until she can no longer walk, and then up, and up, until her arms and her neck and her face are made of ice, and she is frozen in a winter prison, a coffin of crystalline light. She screams, but there is no sound. He sees through her eyes, and his body is frozen with hers, a breath dying on his throat as walls of ice close in and she becomes one with the snow.

He wakes up in a sweat, and stares out the hole in the roof. His hands touch his face, his chest, his arms, feeling for signs of warmth, signs of life, signs of freedom. His legs shift under the covers, just to make sure they can still move. He reaches up and touches the night sky, and his fingers find no resistance in the air they breech. He jumps up from the bed and paces around the room, from window to window to feel the wind on his skin, to the stairs that lead down to his office to stare down into the candlelit room below him. He is free. He could go downstairs, if he wanted. He could patrol the battlements, or sneak into the kitchens for leftovers, or walk over to the tavern for a drink, or make his way to the war room and study the maps. He could even open the gates and walk out into the wilds, losing his way into the dark woods. If he wanted. He is free, and he can go wherever he wants.

He sits by the broken ledge beside the stairs and lays back down on the floor, his feet gently swinging in the air, like a child. Like he’s ten again, lying on the dock by the lake and touching the deep blue water with the tips of his toes, counting stars to still his heart after one of those nights. He loved his family. He always had. But even back then, sometimes it was too much, and he needed room to breathe.

It’s snowing again, and a small icy flake touches the tip of his nose, making him shiver.

He counts the stars among the falling snow until he can no longer tell which is one and which is the other, and when he falls asleep again, he dreams of green instead.

 

* * *

 

 

She slips on wet flooring on the way into his office one day, and glares upwards, scrunching her nose in a comical way that makes Cullen turn away to hide his smile.

“Are you ever getting that fixed?” she asks, and he waves a hand in the air, dismissing her concerns in mock annoyance. There’re more important matters to see to, he claims, but she eyes him with those eyes, sharp like pineleaf, dark like moss in the banks of the old lake, eyes that see through him, that leave him naked and vulnerable in the only way he can stand to be. Her trust is no prison to him. If he can ever be honest with himself, it might just be what sets him free.

She rubs her hand on her coat, hiding a slight wince.

“How is your arm?” he asks, watching her with suspicion.

“It’s fine,” she shrugs, quickly looking away. “I can shoot. It’s fine. It just, you know. When it’s cold.”

“Ariana…” he begs, abusing the liberty she’s granted him of her name, and turns to shut the windows behind him, but she is upon him in an instant, sliding between him and the shutters and leaning out into the wind, just to show him that she can. That she gets it, and it’s alright. Fine hair stands at the nape of her neck, betraying her taunt, and Cullen smirks at her, like a cat far too pleased with himself to catch the fastest mouse in the kitchens by its own mistake. Here, between his arms, avoiding his eyes so she doesn't have to admit defeat and grinning to herself at her own foolishness, she is vulnerable too.

She never fully recovered the bronze of her skin, the warmth of the Marcher sun. There’s no summer in their sea of white.

She shivers in earnest now, and Cullen sees a hint of blue flash over her lips. He wants to kiss the cold away from them. He wants to wrap his arms around her and shield her neck from the wind with the touch of his hand. He wants to warm her body in the fire she sets within him.

“You should dress warmer up in here, my Lady,” is all he can mutter instead, his lips ghosting over her ear until they almost touch her skin, before he forces the windows closed and steps away from her, clearing his throat as he fumbles about his desk for something to focuse his eyes on.

Her absence in the room makes the walls feel more confining than opening any window could fix.

 

* * *

 

Cliffs of solid ice tower all around him, surrounding him in white until it’s all he can see. Flames of bright blue fire crack through the ice, turning glaciers into cascades of snow, into landslides, avalanches, the earth vibrating under his feet as the sky bursts into blinding light. Ice encircles him in nauseating liquid motions as the snow catches his steps, trapping him between walls of stillness. He can feel the crystals inside his blood, red and blue, he can feel himself turning solid, a sculpture cast in frigid water, walls of ice building from within him, around him, until he is frozen in place. He screams, and there’s no sound.

She is there, too. Frozen in her own prison of ice, her face drawn in agony, her eyes on his, begging for rescue he can not give her, for he too, is ice now. Her hand shines bright green, her coffin now a jewel, a prism reflecting green light like pools of jade in every direction, and she hurts. Anger howls through his head, but still he can’t move. He can’t breathe.

He wakes with a scream, louder than he recalls in several years now. He tries to rise, but there’s a weight on his chest.

She clings to him with fervor, hiding her face in his neck so he can’t see her misery, but he can feel the sudden warmth on his skin as she breaks a few angry tears. He brings his arms around her, breathing deeply to steel himself, scratching gently over the nape of her neck to soothe her. She usually hates this, calls him a jerk for comforting her when he’s the one in need of comfort, but tonight she says nothing. Her nails bite deeper into his chest instead, and he almost hopes they’ll cut deep enough to draw blood.

“Cullen, _please_.”

And it’s no longer a request, no longer an invitation.

He stares up into the night sky, at the frosty rain coming through his roof that promises another snowy morning, and for a moment he can see it - thick snow falling over them, piling on her hair, the line of her back, the tip of his toes, the window sills, the chest in the corner with the remnants of his old life, his life before her, covering all he knows, burying them in a prison of old memories and fears until neither of them can breathe. She is shivering.

He raises her chin up for a long, heavy kiss, needing the warmth of her breath in his, and when they part, he realizes - it’s not her hand; it’s her eyes that reflect like prisms, covering his world in green.

 

* * *

 

He dreams, but not in white. It’s a beach he’s never been to, the sand a dark warm sepia under his feet and then a dune of gold and brown, dry here but now wet there, rocks that turn into birds, grass that turns into crabs, the water cold, but also not. When she describes it to him, Cullen has trouble putting her words to picture. Her stories come and go in circles, in tangents, in subject changes that derail so far from where she started that whatever he is dreaming of, Cullen feels it must be three or four different beaches, ten different stories, all combined into one.

“I’ll take you take there, one day, you’ll see,” she muttered against the palm of his hand once, her eyes downcast and wistful, “When this is all over.” The red light from the fireplace made her skin look darker, tanner, almost as he remembered her when they first met.

She calls out to him from the water, waves crashing against her back to die out by his feet. He’s afraid, but not of the deep sea, not of her. Not even of himself. Afraid that if he takes her hand and dives in with her, they’ll let the tide take them, they’ll go anywhere they may, and never come back. That they’ll be free, at last.

“...Ari?” he calls in a whisper, and she stirs in his arms, but does not wake.

Cullen stands, stretching his arms behind his back. He still can’t sleep much, or for too long, not even these days. He throws another log onto the fireplace and walks over to the balcony, glass doors wide open even as it snows relentlessly outside. It’s all for his sake, he knows. Her quarters - _their_ quarters- are sizable, the roof high, few walls or doors to break the space, ample enough to house a small army. Still, sometimes it’s not enough, and she gets it, and gives him all of this - the sparse furniture, the wide bed, the open windows, even at the height of winter.

Leaning over the railing and looking over the vastness of the fields of white before him, he remembers a small hovel by the hill, much too small to house so much life. It didn’t bother them at the time, the tiny room they called a home, the shared bed; the closer they huddled, the warmer the nights felt, even with that one leak in the roof they never managed to fix. The noise and the ruckus was a bit much to take at times, but it was never about the walls surrounding them. They were together, and safe, in there, and that was enough.

“Cullen?” her voice calls softly, half-asleep still, even as she steps out to lean against him, holding the thick wool covers tightly against her chest.

He laughs quietly at the sight of her, their fearless, indomitable Inquisitor, huddled inside a pile of covers, burying her face in his chest for warmth. She’s wearing the gloves he gave her, tawny woolen patterns defaced with doodles in black ink of what looks like someone’s unmentionables - Sera, of course, swears they’re supposed to be the Trevelyan horses, like in her old gauntlets, and Cullen can’t even find it in himself to be upset that she ruined his gift. It makes Ariana laugh every time she wears them, and that’s like his own private version of summer sun, her warmth the only place he ever wants to be.

“I’m cold,” she whines, a faint green glow between them lighting up their faces in the dark, and he wraps her in his arms then, and pulls her back inside before the snow catches in her hair.

It’s comfort, he thinks as he leads them back to bed, being here like this. It’s all the freedom he needs.

 


End file.
